August 24, 2001

WHY
ARE WE IN MACEDONIA?Why
was Rome?

I
go to a great gym, right here in Pacific Heights,
San Francisco, and, because I'm such a regular,
I'm pals with a lot of the guys who go there: they
know what I do for a living, and often ask: "So,
what're you writing about today?" For the past couple
of weeks, the most frequent answer to that question
has been: "Macedonia  again." "Oh yeah?" said
one buddy of mine, with a puzzled look on his face.
"So what're we doing there, anyway?"

NO 'RETURN
TO NORMALCY'

Agood question,
one that has no easy answer, or at least one readily accessible
to the average everyday American. Mr. Average American thinks
we're just a normal country  maybe a bit richer, a bit more
powerful, more democratic and a lot easier to live in than
the rest of them  but normal nonetheless. He is wrong, dead
wrong, at least according to the theoreticians and foreign
policy analysts, the professional policy wonks who dominate
the councils of state  and, increasingly, the councils of
this administration. Well, then, if we aren't a normal nation,
then what the heck are we? A recent article in the Washington
Post [Aug. 21], "Empire
or Not? A Quiet Debate Over US Role," lets the cat out
of the bag.

IMPERIALIST
 AND PROUD OF IT!

According
to the Post piece, calling the US "imperialist" 
a staple of the old Commie-Third Worldist lexicon  is "usually
meant as an insult," but these days some people are taking
it as a compliment. We should be an Empire, argues
this "handful of conservative defense intellectuals." The
leading advocate of this neo-imperialism, we are told, is
one Thomas Donnelly, who represents the "Project
for a New American Century," (PNAC) "a Washington think
tank that advocates a vigorous, expansionistic Reaganite foreign
policy. In ways similar though not identical to the Roman
and British empires, he argues, the United States is an empire
of democracy or liberty  it is not conquering land or establishing
colonies, but it has a dominating global presence militarily,
economically and culturally."

'EMPIRE OF
LIBERTY'?

The idea
of an "empire of liberty" is counterintuitive  and impossible.
For no empire could live on the tax proceeds of a parsimonious
(or even moderately thrifty) republic. No empire could be
governed  or defended  by means of the slow, necessarily
deliberative processes that characterize our republican form
of government. No Constitution could constrain the power necessary
to establish and maintain a global empire. An "empire of liberty"
 isn't that what Napoleon sought to establish? And wasn't
it he who placed the crown on his own head? What these neo-imperialists
hope for, long for, is an American Thermidor:
in effect, the abolition of our Old Republic so they can build,
in its place, an American Empire. Such a development would
have to mean the death of liberty, and for a long time
to come.

COMMITTEE ON
THE ENDLESS DANGER

PNAC asks
conservatives to forget the bitter lessons learned during
the Clinton era and start afresh. Instead of rejecting the
Clintonian ultra-activism of a foreign policy that stuck our
noses  and our troops  everywhere from Haiti to Kosovo,
we should not only embrace it but accelerate it. Chaired by
Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, the PNAC seeks
to revive the unlimited military spending that characterized
the Cold War era and waxes nostalgic for the time when there
was an all-powerful enemy they could point to in order to
justify the expenditures. The neoconservatives of yesteryear,
in seeking to awaken the country to the alleged need to militarize
the economy and engage in a global crusade, founded a now-famous
group, the "Committee on the Present Danger," and it is to
this tradition that the neo-imperialists harken. Of course,
we don't have a present danger  but, no matter. They
don't really need a concrete enemy. Now that we're an empire,
a lack of imperial will is the main danger. As Kristol and
Co. put it in the introduction to their latest manifesto,

"But
there is today a a present danger. It has no name. It is not
to be found in any single strategic adversary. It does not
fit neatly under the heading of international terrorism or
rogue states or ethnic hatred. In fact, the ubiquitous post-Cold
War question, "where is the threat?" is misconceived. Rather,
the present danger is that the United States, the world's
dominant power on whom the maintenance of international peace
and the support of liberal democratic principles depends,
will shrink its responsibilities and, in a fit of absentmindedness,
or parsimony, or indifference, allow the international order
that it created and sustains to collapse. Our present danger
is one of declining military strength, flagging will and confusion
about our role in the world."

AN OMINOUS
PORTENT

Ah, yes:
the Nameless Danger! Let us name it, then, even if the neos
are afraid to. What they seem to be saying, in short, is that
we have met the Enemy, and he is . . . us! This is
true, but not in the way our neocon friends mean it. For their
great enemy, and the enemy of a globalism, is our constitutional
form of government, which makes no provision for the kind
of foreign policy ultra-activism they recommend. In a republic,
the legislative branch has the final say; in an empire, the
executive branch reigns supreme. No empire was ever created,
or successfully defended, by the careful deliberations of
a democratic consensus. No republic sent legions abroad in
a quest for conquest and survived in its republican form for
very long. Yet they blithely invoke the grandeur of Rome,
heedless of that metaphor's ominous portent:

"The
1990s, for all their peace and prosperity, were a squandered
decade. The decade began with America's triumph in the Cold
War and its smashing victory over Iraq in Desert Storm. In
the wake of those twin triumphs, the United States had assumed
an unprecedented position of power and influence in the world.
By the traditional measures of national power, the United
States held a position unmatched since Rome dominated the
Mediterranean world."

THE 'GLORY'
THAT WAS ROME

We all know
what happened to Rome, but the authors seem either ignorant
of history or insensitive to its somber lessons. One possible
cure for victims of such a severe case of amnesia is to lock
them in a room with only a complete set of Gibbon's Decline
and Fall for company. Imperial overstretch, "blowback,"
or even relatively simple theorems such as "every action
has an opposite and equal reaction"  these concepts
have no meaning for the neocon-neo-imperialists. Because,
you see, for them, America is the Great Exception. The rules
of history, or even of human decency and morality, do not
apply to us: for our manifest destiny is nothing less than
"world hegemony." (Trumpets blare.)

HOT AIR

This is
not a foreign policy but a hot air balloon, a giant Zeppelin
ready  begging  to be punctured. If some megalomaniac
should ever get into the White House (John McCain comes immediately
to mind) and launches such an imperialist crusade, the whole
misbegotten project would come crashing down in flames shortly
afterward  and take us down along with it. The level of
taxation required to achieve and sustain "global hegemony"
would have to be confiscatory: and it is for this reason that
Kristol and his neocons-for-McCain opposed the Bush
tax cut. The vision of small (and nonintrusive) government
envisioned by most conservatives is just an anachronism as
far as these Beltway know-it-alls are concerned: for Kristol
and the neo-imperialists, globalization means spreading and
increasing the power of the US government all over
the globe.

A NERO OF OUR
OWN

Donnelly
argues that "the sooner the US government recognized that
it is managing a new empire, the faster it can take steps
to reshape its military and its foreign policy, to fit that
mission." Never mind a tax cut: in the neo-imperialist view,
we can never have enough money for the military, since
the maintenance of a world empire requires expenditures without
limit. The governing elite of such a global entity, too, must
have power without limit, the ability to act swiftly
in order to crush the endless rebellions that would spring
up  one now in the Balkans, another in the Middle East,
yet another in the jungles of South America. It wasn't the
Roman Senate that conquered the Known World, but the
Caesars who pushed the frontiers of empire to Gaul, Spain,
Britain, Germany, Asia Minor, and beyond. So, is this what
we have to look forward to  an American Caesar? Let us hope
we get a Marcus
Aurelius, or perhaps Julian
(the "Apostate")  as depicted in Gore
Vidal's gem of a novel  instead of a Caligula or a Heliogalabus.
I hope we don't get what we deserve, but greatly fear
we will have our own Nero soon enough.

MONARCHIC DEMOCRACY

Which raises
an interesting point. If we're going to have an empire, in
everything but name, then why not be honest and abolish the
republic? Instead of having a mere President, we could have
a King, an Emperor, or perhaps we could invent a whole new
title, say "Hegemon-in-chief." We don't have to make the office
hereditary, we could still have elections. The US could adopt
an imperial system and yet retain all the democratic rigmarole.
Americans have always envied the Brits their royal family,
and the aristocracy that goes with it: once we come out of
the closet, so to speak, as imperialists, why not formalize
and systematize this concept by getting rid of our outmoded
Constitution  or, at least, amending it to allow Kings,
nobles, and all the beribboned frou-frous of a real Imperium?

CROSSING THE
AMERICAN RUBICON

All this
was dismantled, in America, by the Revolution, and strictly
forbidden by the Founders. But since the ascension of such
people to the highest levels of American government would
amount, in effect, to an American Counterrevolution, such
a development  the formal abolition of the American Republic
 is less outrageous than it sounds. For as Garet
Garrett put it, in 1953, in his prophetic pamphlet, Rise
of Empire:

"We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic
and Empire. If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot
make a single stroke between day and night; the precise moment
does not matter. There was no painted sign to say: 'You are
now entering Imperium.' Yet it was a very old road and the
voice of history was saying: 'Whether you know it or not,
the act of crossing may be irreversible.' And now, not far
ahead, is a sign that reads: 'No U-turns.'"

AT THE CROSSROADS

Not far
ahead? Garrett wrote that in 1952, just as the US was entering
on the path to empire. As we enter the new millennium, and
stand at a kind of crossroads, the neo-imperialists raise
their banner, hoping to attract some would-be Caesar. These
people  few in number, but influential in Beltway conservative
circles  are very busy. And very well-funded. In
institutional terms, conservatives, it seems, are assaulted
on every side by "New" this and "New" that  even a "new,"
frankly imperial "conservatism." This new conservatism is
embodied in obscure but very well-funded thinktanks: not only
the PNAC (heavily
funded by the Olin, Scaife, and Bradley foundations),
which is focused on foreign policy, but also the Project for Conservative
Reform (PfCR), which concentrates on domestic policy and
all but openly styles itself as John McCain's brain trust.

LETTER FROM
A READER

Just as
I was finishing up this column, I received a letter from a
reader, one Charles Hoffman, writing from New York, who implored
me to comment on the Washington Post profile of Donnelly
and the PNAC. The piece, he said, "greatly overemphasized
the influence of the neoconservative 'global hegemon' position
on right-wing thinking, while, except for passing reference
to Pat Buchanan's A
Republic, Not An Empire, it failed to acknowledge
the powerful influence of the non-interventionist movement
upon grassroots right-wingers and non-beltway right-wing intellectuals.
I know you're busy traveling, but I feel the article needs
to be responded to, as it grossly distorts the appeal of the
'global hegemon' position to right-wingers as whole. In my
view, it is only the Beltway elites  such as those that
run the Washington Post and the Weekly Standard
 that are in favor of Empire. The rest of us are anti-imperialist,
peaceniks. Please, if you get a chance, respond to this article
to clear up the haze."

THE 'ISOLATIONIST'
GRASSROOTS

I'm not
traveling, yet, except to the corner store for a pack of smokes,
so I trust the above is what you had in mind, Mr. Hoffman.
Thanks for your timely letter, by the way. You raise an important
point, one that needs to be emphasized and understood, and
that is the extreme unpopularity of the neo-imperialist
position amongst grassroots conservatives. In the Beltway,
this kind of thing may go over well at cocktail parties and
at busy little seminars on "The New International Architecture
of Power," but the grassroots aren't going for it. And they
won't go for it under any foreseeable circumstances. This
grassroots "isolationist" sentiment necessarily extends to
congressional Republicans, who, unlike Beltway policy wonks,
are accountable to the real conservative movement.
That's why Bill Kristol once threatened to walk out of the
Republican party  because the congressional Republicans
led the way in vocally opposing the Kosovo war, and remained
skeptical of overseas interventions through the Clinton era
right up until the present day. Now, if only the congressional
Republicans would accelerate his exit from the party by opposing
the war moves of a Republican president....

TARGETING THE
ELITES

In any case,
the important point to understand is that the champions of
imperialism are not particularly interested in rallying the
conservative masses behind their imperial project: what they
want and need is power, the means to implement their
dreams of empire. Conservatives are outsiders, in spite of
the Republican hold on the White House, and for their purposes
only insiders will do. For now, they seem to have latched
on to Mad Dog McCain, the liberal media's favorite Republican,
as their potential American Caesar, but this crowd is fickle
 remember Kristol's Colin Powell for President boomlet?
 and will glom onto anyone or anything in their mad scramble
for the White House.

BUSH AND THE
NEOS

This is a persistent bunch. Losing in the
GOP primaries didn't deter them, or even discourage them.
Donnelly argues that the Bushies, on the campaign trail, promised
withdrawal from the Balkans, but now the "events of the last
six months tend to support" the view that the once near-isolationist
Bush has "matured" in office and come closer to the neo-imperialists
in his actual policies: "Once in office they emphasized that
they would not leave before European allies did," the Post
informs us, "and they also faced the prospect of becoming
more involved in a third Balkans mess, in Macedonia."

BACK TO MACEDONIA

Ah yes, Macedonia  we are back to that,
now, and perhaps the reasons for our presence there are a
little clearer. One group is winning out in the Bush Administration
over the relatively moderate ("realist") tendency represented
by Colin Powell: the neo-imperialists, centered around defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are on the rise, and Donnelly gives
voice to their platform in the Post: "If Americans
thought more clearly and openly about the necessity of an
imperial mission, Donnelly argues, 'We'd better understand
the full range of tasks we want our military to do, from the
Balkans-like constabulary missions to the no-fly zones [over
Iraq] to maintaining enough big-war capacity to hedge against
the emergence of a major adversary."

If all
these "tasks" are to be embraced, if "world hegemony" is now
the goal of US foreign policy, then the only proper answer
to "Why Macedonia?" is "Why not?" Yes, yes, there are
all kinds of subsidiary reasons  economic, ideological,
geopolitical  but the truest and simplest answer is: because
it's there.

Please
Support Antiwar.com

A
contribution of $50 or more will get you a copy of
Ronald Radosh's out-of-print classic study of the
Old Right conservatives, Prophets on the Right:
Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism.
Send contributions to